Welcome everyone to today's webinar. We are pleased to have Insight Software back as our presenters. I have a few quick housekeeping items, then I'll turn it over to our guest speakers. All attendees are muted. This webinar is being recorded and you will receive the link within two business days of the webinar to the replay. Questions will be answered at the end of the webinar. Please enter them at any time though in the Q&A window and we will record them and make sure that they're addressed at the end. Now with great pleasure, I'd like to meet our presenters today. Michaela Cooper, Senior Alliance Partner Manager and Mike Wiley, Senior Solutions Engineer. Without further ado, Michaela. Thanks, Julie. I appreciate the introduction. I appreciate all of you that have joined us here today for our webinar, Real-Time Reporting for SYSPRO Manufacturers. So I'm going to quickly just go over the agenda and then we'll dive into it. So we're going to talk a little bit today about the disconnect between data, reporting, and then analysis. And then we'll talk about how we can provide real-time insights, ending with seeing the solution in action. And of course, takeaways and questions, but feel free to enter them as they come up. I know for me, if I don't enter it right away, I'm going to forget it by the end. So feel free to enter it as they come up. So here at Insight Software, our goal here is to enable the office of the CFO. While today we're focusing on the financial and operational piece of reporting, we also have products that address other needs of controllership and capital management. Well, let's get into it. Well, let's get into it. So we know business is highly unpredictable. Maybe most of us have become very aware of this in the past few years. And we understand that time is critical. And it's often hard to react when your sources are limited, right? Your time is limited as a result of the lack of resources. You know, your insights are limited, right? We're just kind of grinding it out. And I know many of you are probably facing similar challenges, including, you know, one, how to keep up with unprecedented market change, including global inflation, disrupted supply chains. I know in a recent Hanover research survey. It was reported 41% identified strategic decision making as a top priority. Only 41%. I don't know if that blows any of the rest of you away, but it does for me. What are the other 60%-ish doing, right? And then two, you know, how to mitigate the risk of higher than usual levels of employee attrition and how to create a more rewarding work environment for current staff. I know, I think I saw in the news today that there was a lot of issues regarding folks not having jobs right now. I think it was lowest point since February. So we know that there's issues with attrition and with keeping employees. And 50% said in the survey that they struggled to execute planning and reporting responsibilities due to these shortages. It's just on the back burner. So think, how is your team doing, you know, post-COVID, right? Of doing more with less. We have less resources and less people to be able to do it with. And three, how do we satisfy some of our stakeholders' needs for more data, better insights, and help drive the business to better decisions? And then, how do we satisfy the decision-making with that lack of resources and that lack of being able to provide those insights? 42% of the survey identified enabling timely, flexible decisions a big challenge. It's just something that it's like, ah, I'll look into that later. I got fires to put out. And then lastly, for how to balance investing for growth while protecting profit margins and meeting those environmental and social responsibilities. 41% cited this. And 41% cited this as a key challenge. So generally, what we're seeing, and I'm sure you all can relate, there really is more to do and fewer resources available to do it with. So specifically, when it comes to manufacturers, I've been working in this space for quite a bit of time. We have found that they're constantly creating ad hoc reports, as well as the day-to-day operations. So it's like, let's just keep piling stuff on. Well, I know many of you here are already working with tight deadlines. Ad hoc reports are reports that tend to force teams to add more tasks that are already packed lists. Once again, not as important. It'll get done when it can get done. As part of our most recent, our 2023 report, the state of operational reporting, we found that most manufacturing decision makers are creating more than 11 ad hoc reports each month. That's a lot. And I know it's not like everybody's working every single day of the month. So that's quite a bit, even just per week. So that brings us to our poll question. How are you all currently managing your reporting? And a box should pop up for you to answer your answers. Are you utilizing, oh, it popped up for me too. Good. Are you utilizing CISPRO's native reporting or Crystal Reports? Are you exporting and data dumping into Excel? Are you outsourcing this process or report creation to maybe an outside consultant? Or maybe it's a combination of all of them? I don't know if I'll be able to view the results here. So when it's looking like everybody's entered, maybe Julie can help publish it or maybe I'll be able to view it. Yeah, it looks like 44% sort of combination of all three. And the second place was 43% manual data dumping and manipulation in Excel. The lowest was outsourcing report creation at 1%. Okay. Yeah. We know that that can often be either heavy on the wallet or, you know, just outsourcing that whole process can even be timely. Oh, okay. There we go. Oh, okay. There we go. It's showing now. A combination of all three is certainly taxing on an organization. So let's talk about that a little bit. With the manufacturers we surveyed as part of our survey this year, we found that they're currently managing their reporting predominantly by data dumping and manipulating that data in Excel. So I know I think that was second place. So that sounds about right with what we did with our survey. Followed by a close second with those utilizing the native ERP reporting. Then over 12% outsourcing that report creation. And that could be a consultant or a vendor or whoever it may be. And then about 20% of organizations are using some sort of combination of all three. So it sounds like you guys peaked at this because you guys already knew how we, you know, ended up with the with the survey results. So as you can see, this isn't very efficient, right? Especially that data dumping process. And given the market challenges and how the limitations of existing systems really hamper that efficiency, thinking of how do you really unlock that value of your business data, you know, with your reporting so you can be more strategic, in all parts of your business. It's not just strictly the financial side, right? It's got to be all parts. So if you can transform your reporting process using automation, so you can produce trusted insights, better predictability, greater flexibility, then you'll be able to make that shift from this rigid, reactive, slow, siloed transactional process, to be more agile, proactive, insight driven, collaborative, and strategic. So if you're looking at this list, I'm interested in like, where are you guys checking your box? Where are you guys at right now? But the key is doing more with less. So a spreadsheet server, this is an Excel add-in. So it's going to provide you with that real-time SysPro data directly in Excel. It's going to eliminate any sort of manual reporting processes, empower you all to create your own live reports without requiring technical knowledge. You know, in our long-tenured partnership with SysPro, we've enabled the creation of custom queries within Excel. So you can drill from summary to transaction level data in real-time. This isn't a nightly refresh. This is live. The moment you want to look at the data, it is going to be there in Excel. This enables everyday Excel users to create ad hoc inquiries without involving IT. So IT can focus on what they probably actually should be doing day-to-day. And now you can automate the distribution of reports. You know, you can reduce that month-end effort from maybe it takes days to an hour or two. Some of you are like, how is that even possible? But it is, you know, making it more fast, a faster process. It's a simple installation with no additional servers required. I know the name spreadsheet server sounds like, where's the server? There's no servers. And there's no reliance on IT here. So let's dive deeper into where the inefficiencies in the reporting process of many organizations occur and why our product helps. Okay. So generally, we're finding that these tools people are using to create reports often lack, right? Maybe they're not flexible or can't be easily customized. I'm going to bet if I picked out two of you here. Maybe you're both manufacturers. But what you both want to report on may be vastly different. So that's where it comes into play, where you need to each be able to customize what these reports look like. And they don't just have the ability to get information that you want. You can present it in the way that you want. And with spreadsheet server being Excel-based, we can give that information to you. So that's where you want to do in real time. So that way you can leverage the Excel interface and get into that data. We're not asking you to reinvent the wheel. You probably already have reports that work fine, that look great. And we can already utilize those. We can just really take it to the next level, make it live. And you know, once you're in Excel, it's almost limitless what you can do with that data. So today, to fix the problem with canned reports and the data gets dumped into Excel, you might have to combine two or three different reports, pull it all together in order to display the information that you want to show. That can get messy. Cutting and pasting is notorious for introducing errors. Do any of us want to make business decisions based off of the possibility that we're just making careless errors? Because of the copying and pasting and manipulating and massaging. So spreadsheet server is going to eliminate that mess. And Mike's going to show you how easy it is. And to massage that data any way you want, we're spending more time analyzing and less time on the actual fixing and correcting and pulling that data. And taking away that data dumping and making it into a nice visual format. So when you do send it to the board, the C-suite, sharing it with multiple department heads, it's easy for them to pull the data in that makes sense for them. So that way they can make better data-driven decisions off of that. And with that real-time connection, having that ability to make better informed decisions quickly, I think is huge, right? Sometimes we just need to make a decision pretty quickly. And we can't wait for somebody to create those reports. Once again, massage it. We need that data at the tip of our fingers. And third, you know, that inefficiency of the manual reformatting that comes with it. We just want you to have your reports created and now they're drillable. They're live. You can change parameters. And maybe you create a report once and it works, but maybe the fourth time you create it, now there's issues with it. You've copied and pasted something wrong. And for the fifth and sixth and seventh time. Now there's errors because of that one time that you created that report and there may have been something incorrect. So, you know, finally, as you all know, once you get these reports updated, what happens? You do it again next month. You do it next week. Maybe you guys are on a daily report cycle. And the CFO was asking, well, where does this stand? Where are we at with this? And now you've got to repeat all these steps all over again to just answer a simple question that he or she is asking. And we want you to be able to do that without having to say, oh, right, well, now I got to take a chunk out of my day to be able to answer this question for them. So with Spreadsheet Server, we're going to eliminate all of these four things here. We're going to make it very simple. So automation is what we want you to do with your current reporting processes. So one of the benefits here is if you're looking at the reporting triangle, this one here on the left, if you're spending more time preparing the data than actually analyzing it, because it's actually taking so much of your time to do it, you're exhausted. You don't even want to look at that data anymore. You're done with it. It's the end of the day. Analyzing is a short bit of it. And that's really not the desired state of an efficient reporting process. So if you're spending 45 minutes just to get the report and then just 15 minutes analyzing it, that's not efficient. So in the desired state, we're flipping that process. We're going to have a smaller amount of time preparing the reports and a larger amount of time analyzing the data. HolidayTA So the whole idea here is automating. And more moving the manual time consuming work. So you can turn that triangle upside down and actually do more with less. I wish I was in a room with all of you. I'm like, raise your hand, which triangle are you all? But if you're looking and analyzing truly what your organization is doing in your more of the triangle on the left, I'd ask you to consider how you can move it closer to the triangle on the right. So with our longstanding partnership with SysPro, their users really have loved using our Excel-based tool for many, many years, including their own VP of finance. And why is that? It's a direct connection, which means there's no middleware, there's no cubing, no data warehousing involved. It's not a month of implementation. It is an hour. And we essentially just want you to get up and running, get to reporting as quickly as possible. Okay. We also have 30 pre-built reports that we provide you and with some queries as well. So Mike can show you a little bit about what that looks like. We also have drill down functionality. So you can answer the questions as they come up instead of having SysPro on one side, your Excel sheet on one side, this doesn't make sense. And then you're diving back deep into it. You can stay all within your Excel spreadsheet to figure out what exactly is going on. Why does this number look this way? This doesn't make any sense. Drill right into it. And then ultimately, once the reporting is complete, this doesn't mean you should spend the next couple of days distributing them to the different territories, to the different department heads. You know, every Friday by noon, this certain individual in this certain group needs these reports. We can automate that process. So they receive the latest data live as it's sent to them. So really from report creation to report distribution, this product can help. And finally, before I pass things over to Mike, I wanted to share a case study that highlights how automating your report reporting contributes to real-time savings here. And I don't know if Jordan's on here. I know I have some customers that are dialed in today. But I know Graphics Plastic. They had been on SysPro. They've been using it since 2001. So it was quite a bit of time. And when we first spoke to them, they were of the mentality of, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Processes are fine. You know, we're doing okay. But when the one person who was managing the reporting announced her retirement, they knew they had to figure out a way to unsilo this process and make an adjustment. And once they decided to move forward with Spreadsheet Server, they almost instantly saw those benefits. I know they're now able to pull data in and instantly drill down to that transaction level detail in real time. I know the president, Jordan Katz, said, because our financial information is accessible right there in Excel, Spreadsheet Server completely eliminated the need to compile financial statements. It cuts our monthly closing time by one or two days per month. So given this, you can see how their reporting triangle, remember the one on the left, has flipped. So where it was once heavy on the administrative task of pulling, manipulating that data, they can now spend a majority of their time commenting, analyzing, finding ways to improve their business. So now for the moment you've been waiting for, I'm going to hand things off to Mike. We're going to walk you through Spreadsheet Server. And of course, feel free to answer your comments or questions as they arise. All right. Sounds good. Well, thank you there, Michaela. And I just want to welcome everyone once again. My name is Mike. I'm one of our solution engineers on the Insight Software team. And what you can see here is that this is just inside of Excel. You'll see this is my standard homepage. I've got all my available functions. But what I also have, and I'm trying to get, can't see my ribbon. Let me move this over just a little bit. Okay. What I also have up at the top is an add-in for Spreadsheet Server. And what this is doing is it's giving us a live, refreshable, drillable feed into our SysPro data so that we can refresh it. We can drill into those details. We can make some decisions on it. But like Michaela said, the name of the game is really automating that process. It's just making it a refreshable, repeatable process where you don't have to spend all that time and labor and compiling the data. You can just reap the benefits of it and analyze it. And again, make those critical business decisions. Now, along with our partnership with SysPro, we do have a number of templates. You'll see those listed off here that you'll get to benefit from. So we provide these to you. So if you see anything that piques your interest, we can send this over to you. You can leverage it. But these are included with the solution. You'll see they touch on a number of areas, things from financial reporting all the way through manufacturing, purchase orders, inventory, even just your AP and AR. So there's a number of areas that it touches. But this is not a limitation by any means. Once Spreadsheet Server is connected, you can report on everything in your database. So if there's anything that's currently locked or currently not possible to do within SysPro, this opens the door for you to be able to put that column exactly where you want it and drive the outputs accordingly. But maybe just to start off here on just the financials, just to give you a brief rundown and a good introduction into how this is pulling the data. What you can see here is just a very basic income statement. I've got my current year actuals, previous year actuals, and then I've got a couple of parameters on the right that I can modify to refresh the data. So as I make changes to it, you'll see that the data, the values we're supplying, those are just updating on the fly. And I can get more granular with the data. If I want to filter it by a branch or a division here, we can do that. If I want to consolidate and look at all of those, that's what the asterisk can do. So it's just a wild card to capture everything for that parameter. So you could use this as, you know, you could use the asterisk as a way to pull all your parts or all your stock codes, or maybe it's all your invoices. It's just some logic or syntax you can apply. But the way we pull data is through formulas. Behind each of these cells, there is a unique formula that sits behind it. That is ultimately how we're getting to the data. Now, the thing is, you don't have to memorize it. You don't have to write out the formula. It's just there to let you know it's refreshable data that you can now drill into. So let's say I want to drill into my merchandise sales here. What I can do is select the value, then use the drill down on the ribbon to go searching for the underlying details. And now I can see in the same window here, all those different unique combinations, those different branches for the different accounts that have a balance and ultimately net to my 35 million in this year. So let's look at this. But we're not limited to just this level of detail. If we right click, we can continue this search to the journals or even beyond. So you'll see I've got a couple options here. You're just going to have one that's smooth and just says SysPro transactions. So it'll be very obvious as far as what to select. But you can then drill to this next layer, go capture those base level entry values, look for comments, and just again, validate everything and look for anything that might be high. So that's not really high or low. But again, just quickly being able to validate all of that information in our reports. Now, from here, what we can then do, we can expose our hidden parameters up here. And you'll see that any unique formula is just pointing to a combination of values above, as well as other things on the left, like the accounts in this case. Now, from here, I could change the database if I wanted. So if you have multiple companies, you can just type in the other company. And pull back some data. So I could just as easily update our year. I can update the connection. So we'll look at, say, my SysPro EDU1 connection here. I can pull it in and update the results. So then you could compare. You could consolidate those and sum them. So we can connect and pull data from multiple databases. From there, you can look at different balance types. So that could be actuals. It could be budgets. We can change the output from year to date back to the period. Or maybe we want to look at the quarter or life to date or something else. Then on the left, we have, of course, our accounts. And as far as syntax goes, we can group and summarize values in a number of ways. If I wanted to just pull a basic range of results, I can put a period in the middle to pull back every account in this case between 4,000 and 4,999. So this logic could be applied to part details. It could be applied to, again, invoices or other jobs or other values that you want to use a range for. Alternatively, though, you could also do a list. So I could say, OK, I want to pull back 5,000. And I want to look at 5,600 as well. So in this case, I can use brackets and a comma to combine and pull back from both of those different accounts. If I want to throw in a third one, again, it's just another comma. But that's how we can leverage a list instead of a range. Now, these can get more complex. You may have use cases where you've got ranges and you want to exclude a value from there. Or maybe you want to add a list of results or even using just your basic asterisk here as a partial wildcard. You can do that, too. So, again, there's a number of ways we can use some syntax and logic here to build out the reports. But as you can see here, this is just a basic report here to get you started. But it's flexible. If you want to modify it and let's say I want to add in a variance here, we can do that. It's just Excel at the end of the day. So we can apply that, carry it down into our report. We can then take the formatting and apply it back on this new column. And you can see we've now updated our output. So, again, if you want to change the charts, the color schemes, the formatting here, it's still Excel. You can personalize it and make it your own. Now, that being said, we have a number of report examples, but the name of the game here is they're just formulas. It's just Excel. So in this case here, if I want to build a rolling 12 report, I can just drag that formula across and instantly generate it. All that we're doing here is referencing parameters once again. And in this case, we're just updating the month as we go across, but it's all the same other values. So now we can build that rolling 12. Or even look at it as an actual to budget comparison. So if you're using budgets in SysPro, those are just values that we can cycle through. So I could change our budget version and have the budget details update. I can also change our driving period as well. So I could, instead of looking at just one budget, you know, or, you know, closing the books, say, in June here, let's say we've now closed the books in, you know, now we're into September. So let's say we just close the books for August. I can update our driving period, which will then flip those values to be everything through August as actuals and everything ahead of it is plan. So that I can then compare it to my summation here, which is just the projection, just the total of our current year to date with the budget. And then ultimately compare that to our year to date budget and track of variance. So again, to us, it's just data, you can format it and create it any way that you want. Now, if we jump back home here, that's just again, just a brief rundown on the financials, but spreadsheet server can go well beyond this, you'll see there's a lot of other areas we can tackle and maybe just to give you some ideas into what this can do for you. If we jump over to say inventory sold. Once again, it's just data to us. It's just formulas. Once again, there's just a couple different ways we can use these formulas now. So up in the left hand corner, I've got my parameters that I can use to drive and update this report. I've then got summary values off to the right where I can say, okay, I want to bring back the total of this column, the sum of the quantity sold, but I want to bring it back with a formula. And the benefit of this is I can drill into it just like your financials we looked at earlier. And now we can scroll across, I can look at the data, I can even group this by say the product line. And let's say I want to put some subtotals on there or look at the sales amount by product line, I can now do that and expand it from here. So it's just a way to pivot on it to, you know, better visualize it better interpret it. You can always export this view back to Excel if you want and pivot on it from there. But alternatively, we have other formulas like this detail formula that I can run to bring back the detail into Excel. So from here, I could make a parameter change, I can even do dynamic lookups into my parameter. So if I want to do a quick search, it's all my active product lines, I can do that. And then from here, I can just plug in a value, that's going to update these results above, I can rerun the detail, that's going to pull in that product line, and it's going to update the report output. You'll see this formula also gives you the timestamp so you know when you ran it last. But additionally, we can even run sub queries to drill in and look further into the details to run a separate report to give us some added insights. So in this case, I can see the stock codes, you know, I can see the product line, I can see what was sold the sales amount, but now I want to know, can I actually fulfill these orders? Do I have enough in inventory for that part to create this? Well, what I have here is another formula that I can drill into to run that search. And this is going to give me more insights to the warehouse information. So it's a separate report that I can use to drill in on that stock code here and bring back these amounts. So now I can see how much I have available what's on hand, what's already been allocated. So I have a good sense of whether or not we can actually complete this, the sale item right now. So these are just different formulas, different ways you can use them to drive and update your reports. So whether we look at inventory sold, maybe it's more of like a daily production summary or something else. A lot of these reports have the same themes or just the same general layout to them. But once again, we can put in parameters. Let's say I want to look at a job range. So again, a period there to denote it, I can rerun the report that'll limit it by my job. So just jobs 140 through 149. And again, I can see all of this information. So I can scroll across, there's a lot of dates, a lot of other fields, you know, sales orders, you know, we're pretty limited in terms of just what data we have here. But you can see we can pull back a variety of information and it's all entirely flexible. So whether it's, you know, this type of report, maybe it's more of just your AP aging. So if we want to look at invoices and look at, you know, suppliers, or maybe we want to jump over to more of like the aging side of it, where I can see those buckets, the 30 day windows. Again, it's dynamic, it's just data that we can refresh and utilize. But the benefit is all of this is flexible, too. In any of these reports, if there's a parameter that's missing, maybe you want to add the stock code to this or the job or something else. That's entirely possible. If you want to add other parameters to filter by, maybe it's, you know, other dates or other values. Maybe it's the actual invoice or something like that, you could add that and make the change and leverage it. So again, you're not locked into these reports, you can build your own reports, you can modify these. That's really the flexibility here is you really have just total control over your data. So to better unpack what that actually looks like here. Let's just take it from the top, you know, let's say we want to actually build a report now. Every report starts off inside this formula builder. And when we open this up here, you'll see there's a number of formula options there on the left. The top three formulas are general ledger only. So these are used for your financial statements. So things like income statements, balance sheets, a trial balance, balance. That's what these formulas are good for. And different formulas of different use cases. This top one is a balance. It's just bringing back a single number that you can drill into. Whereas this next one allows you to take the details like journals and drop them into a table in Excel, where you could update the account and watch your table of journals update. We have other things that can just do, you know, a simple ad hoc query like bringing back the account description. So we can reference the account number, bring back the account description. Alternatively, though, we have all these query formulas that go well beyond just your financial data. So when we looked at that inventory sold or APNAR or the production summary or any of those other types of reports, those are all driven by these query formulas. And you'll see these are driven by an underlying query. So we are using queries to capture the data. But what we have is an easy to use query designer to help you get there. So along with the templates, we provide about 30, 30, 35 queries for you to work with. Again, you can modify them, you can change them. But those are going to be modified within our query designer. And if you want to build your own custom queries, you can do that there too. But the thing is with the designer, it generates the SQL statement for you. It's really built with accounting and finance and money. So you don't have to be a SQL expert. So you don't have to be a programmer. It's very much a drag and drop double click interface to guide you through the process of creating a query. So that being said here, let's go ahead and build a couple examples. We'll start off once again, I'll just build a brief financial one. I'll show you how we can build that. Then we'll come back and we can build some operational reports as well. So let's say in this case, okay, I want to build, you know, just a basic income statement. How do I go about doing that? Well, the first thing is to indicate where we want to place the formula. So it's just filling out which tab, what we want to do with data that's there. From here, we can also pick and choose our connection, which is this, of course, is going to be SysPro. We can change our output from periods to quarters to year to dates, life to dates, even a range of months. We could change the year, the period. I could change the database. So if I want to point to a different company or database code, I could do that. You can even look at actuals or budgets. So again, just choosing from the dropdowns. Now I can set up how I want to position the report. You have those two options, row or column. Row puts those values across the formula, whereas column leaves it vertically above. So just a preference. You're not locked into it. You can always make changes. There's also these lookups on the right to help you find those values. So if I'm looking for revenue or something else, I can filter. If I'm looking for a group, we can search and scroll through. Even say your accounts, I can drill down and just get a quick sense for, you know, maybe I'm looking for cash. I can check the box, apply what I want, and that builds it into the report. But we're going to broaden the scope here a bit. If we're building an income statement, I'm going to take, we'll just take all of my revenue values here. So just doing a range of all the 4,000s. I can then insert this in, and that generates our formula. And this is instantly refreshable. It's instantly drillable. I can drill the details. All of that is just your standard functionality. But from here, once a formula is there, it's just a value that we can copy and paste like anything else. So if I modify the accounts now, we can drive the data. I could then update the descriptions. We'll call that, say, revenue, call that expense. Maybe this is everything else. And we'll just track just a basic net calculation now. So one thing you'll see is the revenue did come in as a negative value. A lot of times, that's just how the database stores it. We can always go back and modify this formula again. And there's one step that I skipped over, and that's this invert sign checkbox. Ultimately, that's what this is used for. It's just a way we can clean this formula up. It's just putting a negative in front of it. That's really all that it's doing. These are just Excel formulas. If you want to divide this by, say, a factor of 1,000, you can do that. If you want to add it into an if statement or something else, you can do that as well. Again, this is still Excel. Everything that you can do today still applies. But now we can copy this over. We can paste it. We can do some added analysis. So we may want to look at this as a comparison. And maybe it's just actual budget, or maybe it's something simple like year over year. I can just plug in the value and quickly create that comparison. Or we could compare that to our year to date and stack that up with the quarter. It's again, just a matter of changing the parameters to modify the output or information brought back. And the other thing we'll add here, just so you can see it, we can add charts and graphs. This is, of course, Excel. So we can make those changes. We can add that in. We can do some formatting. Again, it's just however you want to structure and design. these reports. Now, from here, though, that's the financial side of it. So if you're building a balance sheet, well, you'll just use balance sheet accounts. If you're doing a trial balance, you could just put an asterisk there and you can actually just expand it down. So we can then just expand the report, pull back all those unique combinations of accounts and break that down into our output. So now I can see those two different accounts that fit this range condition where I've got data. It gives me the descriptions of those as well. And we can then collapse it, clean it up. And we can look at one of these other ones. You know, maybe it's looking at the other income and revenue here that I specified. It's just another value that we can expand. We can pull down the details. And you can see this one's a bit of a better example. I've got a lot more expense values that we're pulling in. So again, it just depends on how you want to visualize it, how you want to leverage the data. But the core concept of building the reports, just starts with that basic formula. But let's say, okay, we want to go build an inventory report, you know, something different. We don't want the financials. I'm not worried about that. I want to build, you know, more of the operational side of it. How do I get to that data? Well, once again, it just comes back to the formula builder. And that's where these query formulas kick in. Now, once again, these are going to be running underlying queries. These queries, though, are just files. You can browse out to those. You'll see in my SysPro folder. These are all the queries we provide to you. So everything in this list you get to receive and you can take it, you can run with it, you can modify it, change it. It's really meant to be just a starting point for you. But let's say I want to build that inventory sold report again. I can select the query. Then it'll populate the parameters just like before that I can go in and modify to change the output. So this is where it's going. This is what it's doing. So I'm going to take the sum versus, say, counting or average or max or min. I can change the output, too. So maybe I want to look at sales amount instead. And I could put in a product line if I wanted. I may leave that just as is for now. But if I go ahead and insert this in, that brings back a formula. And it just tells you it's taken the sum of the sales amount. So if we drill in on that formula, we can see the details. And if we go look at our our sales amount column, the total of this, that 19 million, 19 five, that's what we brought back with our query. That's the question we just answered. Now, from here, though, we can use other formulas to put in some other parameters like the product line. I'm going to use a quick look up here to just run a quick search. So I may want to look at it looks like I may have moved this. Actually, I'm not seeing the right one. That's OK. What we can do is just put in a value. You know, let's say I want to just look at, say, finished goods that can update it if I want to then copy and paste this. And, you know, I could put in even just a partial value. If I want to pull back everything that begins with a B, that'll probably be a quick way for me to look at those bicycle accessories. So, yeah, you can see bicycle accessories, bicycle helmets. So, again, the shorthanded way with the asterisk there is a quick way to capture that data. But that's your summary formula. But we can also pull back data in a variety of ways. So that's what these different formulas are used for. I could then use the detail formula instead here to capture that same result. So we'll go look for. We'll go look for that. Let's see. I'm going to pull back the inventory sold once again. And in this case, though, it's just going to be a bit of a different output. Instead of a number or a balance, I'm going to bring back all the detail. I just want all of that to drop down into an Excel table so I can see all of it and understand it. So what we can then do is tell it where we want to put it. So I want to put it into a table. And I don't have a table in this report yet. So we're just going to create one. I'm going to create a table called demo. So it doesn't exist yet. There's nothing in this report currently. That's absolutely fine. You can choose some other parameters here like to include column headings, auto fit column size, clear the table. But ultimately, we can then insert this. And it's going to say, hey, you don't have a table called demo. Do you want to create that? Sure. Let's go ahead and do that. And let's drop that table and say row 38. So what this is now created for us is we have generated a detail formula. And we've assigned an output location, which is this table that's just a standard Excel table called demo. So all that's left is to run it. And I can go up to my ribbon here and simply run that detail report. And that'll generate the output. It brings it back into that table so we can better visualize and understand our data. So again, it all starts with an underlying query. Once a query exists, we can then generate the reports in any format or any way that we want. But now apart from just building reports, we also have a way to automate the distribution of those reports. You'll see on the far right-hand side of the ribbon, something called our distribution manager. This is how we send these out to different users. So if I jump back to the beginning here, you'll see this is more or less the final output of what you're trying to build. First and foremost, we're trying to build a new control sheet. That's what I've already done here. So we'll just create a secondary one just as another example. All that's doing is creating a new tab in the workbook. And it's also opening up the maintain specifications window, which is the next option right here. This is again, how we build the users of, you know, how we want to build out a user list. So what we can then do is choose how we want to send these out. So if I want to send this out through email, I could do that. I want to send it to a file location, a printer, something else. So we can do that as well. If you do choose the email option, another tab opens up here where you can search for your contacts. You can even just type in their email. So if I wanted to send this to Sherry, my colleague, I could do that. Just putting in their email to modify the location. I can give it a subject line. So these will be her reports. This is going to be maybe some instructions or just the body of the email that I'm providing. But then from there, if we jump back to general, I can choose what I want to send. So I'm going to give her a file called, I don't know, Sherry's reports. From here, I can choose the way that it's presented to her, whether it's an Excel file, maybe it's a PDF, maybe it's a Word document. I can choose which worksheets I want to give her. So maybe I want to give her the balance sheet. Maybe it's the income statement. Maybe it's going to be that scrolling through here, like sales orders or something else. So I can choose as many reports as I want to send to her. Now, from there, I can then even put restrictions on those reports. So I could say, you know, on that balance sheet, I want to limit it by a branch or maybe by, you know, the sales report that I sent her. You know, I want to limit that. Let's see, I think that was the sales distribution. Maybe I want to limit the output by a certain value. So let's say, you know, in cell, I don't know, A10, that's going to be the company or the, you know, the product. So I can hard code some values in so that it's limiting the information she can see. Now, ultimately, at the bottom, I can also populate whether I want her to get live data or static data. It's really just an option here. If you leave this off, then that's a good way to send it to other users that have a license. But for many users that do not have a spreadsheet server license, that's where these other options come in to make it a values only template. So it's just numbers. They're just values. It's just a standard Excel file. But you can also make sure it's recalculated before it's sent. So that way, it'll go to the database. It'll pull in all the updated values. It limits it by any conditions you set up and even generates those detail formulas for you to then package it up and send it to them. So if I add this user in, you'll see it then builds the first row of this report. So that's how I got to this output here. It's just a matter of building out those users, assigning what they're going to receive, whether it's live data or static, whether it's an Excel file, a PDF, a Word document. Those are the things you fill out. Once that's done, you can then go up here and distribute this as often as you want. So I could distribute certain rows, I could distribute everything. There's even a scheduling component to this where we can set up a job to run. And it'll allow you to send these out daily, weekly, monthly, it can just automate the entire process. So you can just set it up, forget it, and let it run independently in the background. And you'll feel confident that you can then trust that it'll send these out to those users and everybody's going to receive those reports in whatever cycle or fashion that you've set up and assigned. But ultimately, that's what Spreadsheet Server is all about. It's once again, just connecting you back to SysPro, giving you that live, refreshable, drillable access to all of your information. And again, we have a number of templates and reports that we provide to get you started. But you can also build everything else that you want as well. So again, just giving you control over your data, giving you that ability to refresh it and generate the reports you need right here in Excel. So with that, I'll pass things back over to Michaela and we'll continue from here. Thanks, Mike. Wasn't that a really good presentation? I really appreciate you going through all that, Mike. So as questions are coming in, feel free to go ahead and enter them in as I'm doing a little bit of wrap up here. So as we've reviewed, as companies are doing more with less, as many of you probably easily saw, Spreadsheet Server is going to offer that flexible means of building out your financial and or operational reporting. So not just for finance, but across the entire organization. Really, it's a proactive solution. Really, it's a proactive solution. So it's going to allow you to answer those questions posed by all the business users day by day. And having that automation really is going to allow for it to be a repeatable process, leveraging that live data and it being drillable. Isn't that pretty easy to just drill right into that data right then and there on an Excel spreadsheet. And now you can analyze those business operations more easily. So with that, we're going to answer any questions. I know I saw a couple come in during the presentation. So we'll start to answer those as well as any others that continue to come in. Yeah, so Michaela, we got quite a few. A few came in to me directly. I'm going to start with the first one that came in. It sort of ties in. It says, is there security to manage what data can't be seen? And can I send reports to people who don't have a license? Yeah, I can take that. So there's a couple ways to tackle that. So one is, first and foremost, the user has to have a license to spreadsheet server. It's a named user license. So each user that wants to have live refreshable data, they need a license. So for many users, that's not the case. And that's okay. That's where the distribution manager kicks in to really help you send out those static versions to those other users. And when you send it out as a static version, you can control what parameters they get, whether they get all the data or a limited specified version of it. And that's set up in their distribution so that every time you send it, they're only getting the data they're responsible for. So that's one option. Another within the configuration of it, there's we provide license keys, you can assign your users to those. There's also, you can set up the connection. So we can add a couple of options to the database to actually pull it. But within that setup, it's called our application configurator. You can put in some user defined security. So there's a couple ways we can tackle that. But yes, you can limit the data that each user receives. That's perfect, because it ties into another question that came through the Q&A. Do we have a user view license? Can we limit which report they will see in the master spreadsheet server file? So different person, but on that similar path of a question. Yeah, so the question there is, is that like, what can a viewer do with the data? Is that the question? They will see. Yeah, can we limit like if they have many tabs, let's say in a spreadsheet and you only want the viewer to see a certain maybe tab or information on that entire spreadsheet, being able to limit them to just maybe a specific. Yes, absolutely. That's again, where that distribution manager kicks in, where you can control what they see, how often it's sent to them, what restrictions you want to apply to that report before it's sent to them. So again, yes, you can you can control that a number of ways. Cool. The other, I had two questions coming from two separate people. But again, they're very similar. One said, what versions of Excel do you connect to? The other one came through the Q&A saying, does your software work with Avanti? Microsoft has said it's introducing co-pilot functionality, also Python. What platform of Excel does your software interface to? Yeah, so I guess a couple questions there. So first, you know, spreadsheet server connects to any version of SysPro. So Avanti, you know, seven, eight, not a problem at all. Spreadsheet server connects to all of that. Where spreadsheet server lives and breathes is inside the Microsoft desktop client of Excel. That's the only place that it works. But, you know, it works with, we support all versions that Microsoft does when it comes to Excel. I believe that's back to 2016 now. But if you're on 365 or something else, not a problem at all. Once again, it's just, you know, it's an Excel add-in for the desktop version of Excel. And it connects to any version of SysPro that you have. Great. Thank you. Next question. Can you bring in costing profile? For example, how much it costs to make 10 of a product? This particular person needs more than the costing profile. They need the detail behind it. Like runtime, setup time, et cetera. Absolutely. Yeah. So that's where, again, just the query side of it kicks in. And, you know, today, if you're not able to get to that detail with spreadsheet server, you can, because you can really open up the database. You can report on anything that's there. So it will take a query to get to that data. But through the designer, you can absolutely generate that report, build it. And we can even discuss services or some other option as well. If you need assistance with that report. But yes, absolutely. That can be done. Great. Another question. This is for reporting only. Data cannot be modified. Thus, it will not affect SysPro's data, correct? Yes, that's correct. This is read-only. So we're not writing data to it. You're not able to modify what's in SysPro. So all of that's going to be just protected, safe. We're just reporting on what's there. So it's truly just read access to the data. Excellent. Now, I just want to jump back to a question. We got a little bit of clarification about an earlier question. If a person with a license, example, if someone has a sales order tab and also a financial statement report, they only want them to see the sales order tab. Can you clarify that's correct? Yes. With a viewer license, I think. With a viewer. Yeah. And if they're, let's say they didn't have distribution manager, Mike, and they simply wanted that viewer. Yeah. So at the end of the day, these are Excel files. So you can send them whatever file version that you want. So if you wanted to send to the viewer just that sales report, you could create a copy of the workbook with just that tab in it and send that to them. So that would just be a standard Excel process to create that other copy. You can also go to the review tab in Excel. And if you want to put restrictions on what cells they can modify, you know, a good use case is if you want to create like a box with all the dropdowns and parameters you want them to change, you can use the review tab to protect the rest of the sheet and just say they can only edit these eight cells where I want them to change the dropdown. So if you're sending it to like an owner, a CFO, you know, board member, whoever it is, maybe it's a manager and you just want to control that a more, a combination of just what you send them. And then some of the other Excel functionality that exists today allows you to accomplish a lot with, with that output. But yes, you can absolutely send them exactly what you want with just the limitations on it that you want as well. It's, it's totally flexible. Excellent. We have time for two more questions. So hopefully we can get them. I got three, but let's see if we can get them all in. So what does IT need to do to get started? Is there an actual server that needs to be built and managed? Yeah. So contrary to the name, I think even Michaela brought this up earlier. We get this a lot. There is no server component to spreadsheet server. We like to think of it more as serving up data or, you know, some other jingle, but it's just a name. It's been around a long time. There is no server to spreadsheet server. It's just an Excel add-in that connects using ODBC to the database. So again, just to read only to pull it to ODBC. It's very simple, very straightforward. can be installed and set up in an hour or less. So it's, it's a very low time to set it up. Excellent. And to follow up on that, the only thing that our team needs to get implemented is, it's just having, we'll kind of go through with you, like filling out a document that just kind of explains how your tables and fields and things like that are set up in SysPro so we can map appropriately. Once again, that's a short little form that needs to be filled out by maybe your IT or your team. And then we build that connection for you. Excellent. We do have three questions left. I'm only going to ask one and then I'll make sure that the other ones get answered via email. But last question, can users manipulate their own SQL queries, for instance, of wanting to connect to a different database? Yeah, absolutely. So spreadsheet server is flexible. It can connect to any kind of relational database. Technically, if you even want to connect to things outside of SysPro, you can do that too. And using that designer, you can create the queries you want. Again, you don't have to write the SQL. If you know SQL and want to, you certainly can. But it generates the SQL for you. You can drag and drop, double click your way through it. And if that's something you want to look at further, we'd be happy to get on a demo and walk you through that query designer portion as well. Excellent. So we are at the top of the hour. There is a couple questions about cost, implementation, custom forms that will make sure that Insight Software answers to those who ask them directly. And I see other ones coming in. So this obviously is an interesting topic for many of our customers. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you, Insight Software. Thank you, Insight Software. Please don't think if we didn't get to your question, we won't answer them. And we appreciate your time today. Look forward to sending you out the link. Yes. Thanks for having us. Reach out to myself or your SysPro account rep and we'll work with you on follow-up questions. Thank you. Thank you.